


All in the Cards

by Brightbear



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 13:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11253846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightbear/pseuds/Brightbear
Summary: Deanna shuffles a Tarot deck in her hands and thinks about Dean Van Valen.





	All in the Cards

**Author's Note:**

> I recently found this saved to my hard-drive - I think I wrote it as part of a challenge but I can't remember which one. Written as a coda to 4.03, and does not take into account later events.  
> Disclaimer: I do not own the pretty boys, they belong to Kripke. All hail.

Deanna is sitting in the upstairs study when the others come back from the hunt. She watches through the window as they trudge up the driveway and thinks about going down to greet them. Mary flies out of the car, anger in her movements, and her face tight with tears that her pride won’t let fall. She is _certainly_ her father’s daughter. The front door slams as Mary enters the house. Samuel follows more slowly, looking serious and sober. Something looks off in the way he walks and Deanna knows that it will probably take at least one bottle of whisky to make him spill the details – but she’ll see to it that he does. She knows him better than he knows himself.

The visiting young hunter, Dean Van Valen, trudges up the path after Samuel. He looks stricken, walking like a man condemned and praying that somebody (anybody) will offer him a reprieve. His eyes follow Samuel desperately like he expects salvation to come from that quarter. Something about him strikes a chord with her. Deanna starts to stand up to go down and ask about what seems to have been a less than successful hunt. She’s barely out of her chair when a black Chevy pulls up at the curb outside the house. Mary flies back out of the house, past a bemused Samuel and Dean, and straight into John Winchester’s arms. Samuel and Dean exchange looks and keep walking into the house. Dean’s head turns to watch Mary and John drive away. A seed of suspicion is planted in Deanna’s mind and she hopes that Dean won’t try to come between Mary and John.

Downstairs, Deanna can hear the hum of voices and the clink of glasses in the dining room. It sounds like Samuel and Dean are getting settled with a bottle of whisky to wind down from the hunt. Dinner’s already in the oven so Deanna feels she can let them talk by themselves for a while. She’ll go down and play the gracious host (and remind Samuel to be one too) but there’s something she wants to do first.

She shuffles her Tarot deck in her hands. The cards are worn and familiar – easy to handle. As the cards pass through her fingers she thinks about Dean Van Valen, a young man aged by a life full of the Hunt. He’s intense and compelling, and far more comfortable with Deanna’s family than he should be. She draws a card from the pack at random, letting whim guide her choice.  
The first card she draws is the ten of pentacles. The picture on the card shows an old man seated beneath an archway of pentacles with a castle in the background. Directly behind him are a young couple and a child. _Family. Inheritance. Stability._  
It’s a strange card to draw for a wandering Hunter like Dean. He told them his family is dead and his chosen profession is one of uncertainty and danger. She frowns, tries again and draws the ten of cups. A couple stand together arm in arm beneath a rainbow of ten cups, while two children play beside them and a house sits in the distance. _Contentment. The heart. A hometown. Family, again._

Tarot-reading is an art rather than a science and Deanna has only ever dabbled. The same cards can be interpreted differently by a different reader but Deanna feels that the message is consistent - even if she's not clear on what the message is. It could be that Dean’s still caught up in avenging the ghosts of his own family or his future could be tied to Deanna’s family. Deanna likes him but in a choice between him and John Winchester, it’s John she’d back. John makes Mary happy and there's no way Deanna's risking that.

Deanna remembers the way Dean looked at Samuel and wonders if Dean is perhaps more interested in having Samuel for a mentor. Mary wants out of this life and Samuel might learn to respect that, but he won’t really understand it deep down. Perhaps he will find some solace in taking Dean under his wing instead? Deanna’s just guessing now, lost in what she wants and probably influencing the cards with wishful thinking. She decides to take one more card. This time she carefully doesn’t think about what Dean may mean for her family. She tries to focus just on Dean and what kind of man he is. She draws the ten of wands.

This is more the type of card she’d expect from a Hunter. It is a picture of a man walking and bent with the effort of carrying ten large wands, each longer than he is tall. He’s overburdened, martyred, and carrying more responsibilities than he can handle. It doesn’t take much effort to read into this card.

Deanna resolves to feed Dean a large dinner and see if he will agree to let her do a full Tarot reading. Samuel may grumble but Deanna will convince him to let Dean stay a little longer. It feels important. Mary’s ready to move on with her life, with one foot out the door. Deanna might just have found someone else to fill their nearly empty nest – at least until Mary gives them grandchildren.

She’s returning the cards to their place on the shelf when she hears the _thump-crash_ of furniture overturning downstairs. She runs from the study, worried that maybe Samuel and Dean have come to blows over their stupid Hunter’s pride. The Tarot cards slip to the ground as she leaves, scattering across the carpet. Deanna runs downstairs to discover that her husband has been possessed by a demon. Things end badly and the demon wearing her husband’s corpse throws her across the room and into the dining room table. As she scrabbles around in the splintered wood, she hopes that Dean can get away to save Mary. Survivor's guilt is maybe another burden that Dean doesn't need but, as the demon reaches down to snap her neck, she doesn't have time to care. Her last thought is a selfish hope that it's Mary's _life_ that will bind Dean to her family for all time.

The End


End file.
